At its best, the United States proudly lives up to its mighty proposition that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are the inalienable rights of all. At its worst, the nation’s dirty secrets can be dark, indeed. These five nonfiction books delve into that dark side of the nation’s history. All of them are worth a look.
The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America by Daniel Okrent
History. | Scribner | May 2019 | 496 pages
In The Guarded Gate, Daniel Okrent recounts the shameful history of eugenics, the fake science behind racist ideologies used to justify harsh U.S. immigration restrictions for more than 40 years. The history includes the early 1920s, when federal legislation introduced strict quotas to dramatically reduced the total number of immigrants. Prominent figures profiled include Francis Galton, Madison Grant, H. Fairfield Osborn, Margaret Sanger, and Maxwell Perkins, among others involved in the eugenics movement. Highly recommended.
El Paso: Five Families and One Hundred Years of Blood, Migration, Race, and Memory by Jasmine Ulloa
History. Journalism. Memoir. | Dutton | March 2026 | 352 pages
Journalist Jasmine Ulloa centers her hometown of El Paso, Texas, in this well-researched 100-year history of immigration across the U.S. southern border. Along the way, she spotlights five families and details numerous harms caused by racist federal policies designed to harass people from Mexico, Guatemala, and other places. The book’s structure presents some challenges, but Ulloa’s righteous anger and passion for her subject shine.
Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act by Nicholson Baker
History. Journalism. Memoir. | Penguin Press | July 2020 | 464 pages
In Baseless, Nicholson Baker chronicles his arduous attempt to use the Freedom of Information Act to find out whether the U.S. government engaged in biological warfare in Korea in the 1950s. The answers aren’t conclusive, but what he did manage to document is horrifying. Biological weapons developed and possibly deployed included contaminated feathers and disease-carrying insects intended to destroy crops and cause mass starvation among civilian populations.
The Deviant’s War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America by Eric Cervini
History. Biography. LGBTQ. | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | June 2020 | 494 pages
When the U.S. Defense Department fired Frank Kameny, a young astronomer, in 1957 because he was believed to be a homosexual and, as such, a security risk, Kameny sued to be reinstated. In The Deviant’s War, Eric Cervini explores Kameny’s life and his years-long legal battles on behalf of himself and others along with the early history of the LGBTQ+ civil rights movement. Cervini’s meticulous research relied on firsthand accounts, FBI records, and personal archives. Highly recommended.
American Reich: A Murder in Orange County, Neo-Nazis, and a New Age of Hate by Eric Lichtblau
History. Politics. | Little Brown and Co. | January 2026 | 352 pgs.
In American Reich, Eric Lichtblau presents a frightening account of neo-Nazis’ and white supremacists’ assaults, murders, and mass shootings of Blacks, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Asians, LGBTQ+ people, and others in the U.S. from 2015 to 2025. While the primary focus is individual actors, Lichtblau also shows how the nation’s entrenched racism, tolerance of hate speech, and law enforcement priorities, and President Trump’s incitement of violence enabled these attacks. #
Marcie Geffner is a journalist, writer, and book critic in Ventura, California.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.